Way Down Upon the Suwannee River...

Hooked up and left Ft. Pierce Thurs. 20/02/14 bright and early.  When we first got to the Treasure Coast area we thought we would run out of things to do and be bored for the last part of the month.  Boy, we were wrong! New to this life and squeezing a cruise in took up a bunch of time.  We have learned to slow down very well it seems.  When we were working a month lasted forever, now our first month has gone flying by and we didn't get to a few of the things that we wanted to do.  We don't really know what happened here, could have been proximity to the Bermuda Triangle, old age setting in or just a total lack of responsibility, but we were never bored here and we don't know where the time went.  Well time marches on and we are the misfits that can't or don't want to keep up. 

Yellow Jacket RV Resort is where we are headed off to for 4 nights.  Near Old Town in the northwest of Florida.  This is a slice of old Florida on the banks of the beautiful Suwannee River.  At $20 bucks per night with our Passport America 50% off discount, it is a bargain.  It is the type place I like, rustic sites but with all the amenities, wifi, cable, nice pool, hot tub and boat rentals.

 Our Site

 

 Looking down the road

 

 

 

 

On Sat. we rented one of their boats for a day of exploring. The Swannee is fed by more than 200 springs and meanders 396km(246mi.) across the state, actually starting in Georgia.  Heading up river from the park, our first stop was Manatee Springs State Park.  This park lived up to it's name as we did get to see a few manatee.  What really stood out was the abundance of wildlife in the stream along the boardwalk out to the river.  Standing at one look-out we could watch large fish swimming upstream, birds spearing smaller fish with their beaks and then flipping them in the air to eat them head first and dozens of turtles basking in the sun, all along with the manatee.  There was more going on at any one time in this 100yds. of stream  than I have ever witnessed anywhere in nature.

 Detra ahead on the boardwalk

 

 Turtles in the sun

 

Looking for alligators

 

Our boat on the Suwannee

 



 

We then headed down the river to see what we could find.  There is very little development along this stretch, in fact most of it is wildlife refuge, but it is not great land to build on either.  We ended going more than 15 miles down to the town of Suwannee. 

The view of your fearless explorers

 

"What is behind us is not before us"

This is where the river ends and spills out to the Gulf of Mexico, so we had to go and see it for ourselves.  Sure enough, the Gulf is right where the explorers before us had found it.

 Mexico straight ahead!

 

Anyone remember how to get back?

 

There was a hiccup in our Olympic viewing plans as the local NBC feed didn't show the USA/Canada game on Friday.  We headed out to find a nice place to watch the game. And what a place we did find!  Bubba's Place!  We could see the neon beer signs from the highway and thought they must have sport fans watching the big game!  We opened the door to stale cigarette smoke, spilt beer and 10 locals right out of central casting.  It was dark and dirty and no place for tourists, we sat down at the bar.  There were TV's, but Bubba's patrons were watching reruns of AFV and discussing how that stuff can happen to anyone with an ATV, a chicken and hog with an attitude at their cousin's wedding.  We asked the bartender about changing the channel on our side of the bar over to the game which she did.  I will say something for Bubba, he has ice cold beer and his happy hour starts at noon.  We settled in and cheered for Canada to wup ass... I mean prevail in this hockey contest, while everyone else in the bar switched over to Jerry Springer.  There were many things posted on the walls at Bubba's, the biggest sign said, "ANYONE WHO STARTS A FIGHT WILL BE THROWN OUT AND BARRED FOR LIFE!  There was a baby picture of Bubba that said "This is Bubba and this is his place".  The big white board over the bar with the heading "Banned for Life" had more than fifty names, a disturbing number of them women.  It turned out to be a fine place to watch Canada battle the US to a 1-0 win and earn a spot in the gold medal game. 

We got lucky for Sunday morn as they were showing the final game on the local station. Up at 6:45 to watch CANADA WIN GOLD!!!!!!... All is right with the world.

 Proud to be Canadian

 

We are starting to work our way over to Texas on no particular schedule, except by sometime in March.  We are struggling with trying to move at a more leisurely pace, we always gobbled up as many miles as we could in the past and old habits die hard.  Now that we know how quick time can go whistling over our heads, we better get started now, or maybe start the next day. (See, we'll get the hang of this)..  We do want to spend a month in or around Corpus Christi area before working our way back to Canada.  That's the plan, but like the Swannee we will go where the current takes us.

Scott